BRIDGEPORT — Video shows the head of the mayor’s office to re-integrate convicted felons into society used a police-style badge and bypassed security while entering the Golden Hill Street courthouse earlier this month.

Louis Reed, an ex-convict who claims he met Mayor Joseph Ganim on a prison bus when Ganim was starting his sentence on federal corruption charges, later adamantly denied to Hearst Connecticut Media that he either had or used such a police-style badge — and was supported in his denial by the mayor’s office.

Police Chief Armando Perez said outside of the Police Department, only the mayor has a police-style badge.

But a video from the security on the front door of the courthouse clearly shows Reed showing a silver badge in a wallet to judicial marshals and was initially allowed through the metal detector at the door without being searched on Aug. 8.

Reed and the mayor’s office did not respond to separate requests for comment on Tuesday.

Perez said he was going to investigate the incident.

“If he implied he was a police officer, he can be arrested for that,” Perez said.

Entry procedure at issue

In May, Reed was appointed to the $57,000-a-year position of director of the Mayor’s Initiative for Re-entry Affairs, an office established by Ganim.

Reed once served a 13-year federal prison sentence on a number of charges including shooting a 5-year-old boy.

“I was definitely a drug dealer. ... I thrived in the ’90s crack cocaine era,” he later said in an interview. “The U.S. federal government considered me a racketeer.”

On Aug. 8, Reed said, he came to the Golden Hill Street courthouse to support a “former client,” Latrel Baker, 20, of Burnsford Avenue, who was being arraigned there on charges of first-degree manslaughter in the April 27 death of 26-year-old Victor Diaz in Bridgeport.

Judicial marshals, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to comment to the media, said Reed flashed a silver police-style badge as he approached the metal detector at the front door of the courthouse. He was thus allowed to enter without going through the usual procedure of emptying his pockets and taking off his belt, the marshals said.

Once through the metal detector, Reed signed a book reserved for law enforcement officers, marshals said. However, one judicial marshal questioned Reed after noticing that while claiming to be with the city, Reed did not put a name of his department on the book, the sources said.

After determining Reed was not a police officer, the sources said, the marshal made him go through the security process.

Reed told Hearst he did not show a police-type badge, and complained the marshal hassled him for no good reason.

Confrontation with marshals

In a statement issued by the mayor’s office, Reed said he was accompanied by MIRA volunteer Kenny Jackson at the courthouse and a marshal “observed our City (employee) badge(s)” as they entered behind a parole officer and an off-duty police detective.

“I was approached by the same marshal and asked to clear the metal detector as well,” the statement said. “In doing so, the marshal began to reprimand us for signing into the log that was exclusive to law enforcement. I immediately told the marshal that I took exception to his condescending tone, and was appalled that, after Kenny ... and myself explained that we were instructed by another marshal to sign in the log, he would not be more professionally courteous than what he was demonstrating (citing, we don’t ‘look like City employees.’) I immediately asked to speak with his supervisor.”

Following a Freedom of Information request, Chief Judicial Marshal Gary Hughes played the Aug. 8 video from the courthouse security camera.

On the video Reed, dressed in a suit, is seen coming up to the metal detector just inside the front door of the courthouse, pulling out a wallet and opening it to show a silver police-style badge to the marshals. A city identification badge hangs from a cord around Reed’s neck.

Reed is then allowed to walk through the metal detector unhindered, and goes out of the range of the camera, where the law enforcement sign-in book is. Seconds later, back on camera, a judicial marshal confronts Reed, who is seen pulling out his wallet and showing an attached silver badge. There is some discussion on the video — which contains no audio — between Reed and the marshal, and Reed then goes back through the metal detector.

Other marshals, again speaking on condition of anonymity, said Reed had previously flashed a silver police-style badge in an effort to gain entry at the Fairfield County Courthouse on Main Street.

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